Northern China

BEIJING, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Russia's top crude producer Rosneft and China's largest state refiner Sinopec Group will sign a memorandum of understanding on advance payments for Russian oil exports to China, according to announcements made on Tuesday. The Russian firm also agreed on crude supplies to a planned joint venture refinery in northern China's Tianjin province with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), China's top energy group and the parent of...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's energy-hungry, high-polluting industries continued to grow too fast in 2013, putting "huge pressures" on the environment and causing air quality to worsen, the country's pollution agency said on Tuesday. Premier Li Keqiang "declared war" on pollution in a major policy address this month, but China has long struggled to strike a balance between protecting the environment and keeping up economic growth. China is...

By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING, Feb 25 (Reuters) - A Chinese man in a smoggy northern city has become the first person in the country to sue the government for failing to curb air pollution, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday. Li Guixin, a resident of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, has submitted his complaint to a district court, asking the Shijiazhuang Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau to "perform its duty to control air...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's smog is making it harder for foreign firms to convince top executives to work in the country, the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing said on Wednesday, offering some of the strongest evidence yet on how pollution is hurting recruitment. Some 48 percent of the 365 foreign companies that replied to the chamber's annual survey, which covers businesses in China's northern cities, said concerns over air quality were turning senior...

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle OSLO, July 8 (Reuters) - Air pollution is shortening the lives of people in northern China by about 5.5 years compared to the south, a disastrous legacy of a policy that provided free coal for heating in the north, an international study shows. Environmental problems are a source of rising social discontent in China; last month Beijing promised new measures to crack down on air pollution, partly by hastening...

By Stian Reklev and Kathy Chen BEIJING, Feb 25 (Reuters) - China is on track to meet its 2020 target for expanding the nation's forests to cover 23 percent of its landmass to combat climate change and soil erosion, the State Forestry Administration (SFA) said on Tuesday. But some observers are critical of the massive reforestation, saying China is focusing on plantation forestry and ignoring the restoration of natural forests, which are still ...

By Adam Rose and David Stanway BEIJING, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A chronic shortage of natural gas is hurting China's plan to move away from burning coal to heat homes and offices, raising the prospect of more choking air pollution this winter and beyond. The problem is worst in northern China, where air pollution mainly caused by decades of reliance on coal has lowered life expectancy by an estimated 5.5 years compared to the south, Chinese and international...

By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING, Feb 25 (Reuters) - A Chinese man in a smoggy northern city has become the first person in the country to sue the government for failing to curb air pollution, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday. Li Guixin, a resident of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, has submitted his complaint to a district court, asking the Shijiazhuang Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau to "perform its duty to control air pollution...

BEIJING, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Crude steel output from China's top steelmaking province of Hebei rose 7.4 percent in December from the previous month, but the figure was 5.2 percent lower than 2012 as Beijing's anti-pollution drive starts to bite. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, Hebei produced 12.3 million tonnes of crude steel in the final month of 2013, amounting to 19.7 percent of the national total, up from 18.8 percent in November, but...

BEIJING, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Natural disasters including droughts, floods and earthquakes cost China 421 billion yuan ($69 bln) in 2013, official data showed on Monday, nearly double the total in the previous year. China has always been prone to natural disasters but a changing climate is causing more extreme weather, which hits food production, threatens scarce water resources and damages energy security, according to the government. Data released by...

BEIJING, Oct 28 (Reuters) - China's Health Ministry will set up a national network within five years to provide a way of monitoring the long-term impact of chronic air pollution on human health, state media said on Monday. The network will gather data on PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers, in different locations around the country, the report said, citing a ministry statement. "The document noted that the absence of a long-term, ...

TANGSHAN, China (Reuters) - Reforming the bloated steel sector in northern China's Hebei province is a key part of Beijing's efforts to cut air pollution - but it is the market, not the government, that is doing most of the work. That undermines state media claims that the government is going the extra mile to clean up Hebei, China's biggest steel producer and home to seven of the 10 most polluted cities in the country, environmentalists and industry experts said. ...

Rev. Malcolm Dare Shutters, 80, pastor for 40 years of the Wicker Park Lutheran Church, had served as a missionary in China before and after World War II. A resident of Wheaton, he died at home Sunday. "He was very giving and very unselfish," his wife, Janet, said. Rev. Shutters graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., in 1939. He went with his wife to a small town in Northern China, where he served as principal of the school. The couple were...

SINGAPORE, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Top oil producer Russia is aiming to eventually triple exports to China to some 1 million barrels per day (bpd), seeking to secure market share and billions of dollars in pre-payments. Long-term supply deals signed last year with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) will bring Russia's state oil company Rosneft much needed cash to ease its heavy debt burden and finance development of untapped reserves in East Siberia to honour supply...

Unlike my Southern Chinese rice-eating ancestors, my Northern Chinese pal Wen Huang grew up during the Cultural Revolution eating noodles and wheat flour buns called mantou as his main starch staples. "Since rice came from the south, it was a small part of our rations and a special treat," Huang said. "We mostly got wheat and corn. My mom would make steamed mantou with the flour and after two or three days when it got stale, she would fry it in oil so that we would eat it with vegetables or...

BEIJING, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Crude steel output from China's top steelmaking province of Hebei rose 7.4 percent in December from the previous month, but the figure was 5.2 percent lower than 2012 as Beijing's anti-pollution drive starts to bite. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, Hebei produced 12.3 million tonnes of crude steel in the final month of 2013, amounting to 19.7 percent of the national total, up from 18.8 percent in November, but...

By Ben Blanchard BEIJING, Jan 21 (Reuters) - China is confident that Russia will be able to guarantee security at next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi, officials said on Tuesday. To ease fears over possible breaches of security, President Vladimir Putin has ordered safety measures beefed up nationwide after 34 people were killed last month in bombings in Volgograd, another city in southern Russia. While about 37,000 Russian personnel are providing security in the...